Or that for which I live ; whom once again rich gift. O Ferdinand, I do believe it; fition 4 may 1 3 strangely flood the test :) Strangely is used by way of coma mendation, merveilleusement, to a wonder ; the fame is the sense in the foregoing scene. JOHNSON. i. e. in the last scene of the preceding act: - with good life bil send him Lher virgin kuot---) The same expresfion occurs in Pericles Untide I still my virgin knot will keepe." STEEVENS. 6 If thou dost break her virgin knot before All fanctimonious ceremonies, &c. ) This, and the passage in Pericles Prince of Tyre, are manifest allusions to the zones of the ancients, which were worn as guardians of chastity by marriageable young women. 66 Puellæ, contra, nondum viripotentes, hujufmodi zonis non utebantur : quod videlicet immaturis virgunculis nullum , aut certé minimém, a corruptoribus periculum immineret : quas propterea vocabant 'apítges, nempe discinclase' With full and holy rite be minister'd, you shall hate it both: therefore; take heed, As Hymen's lamps shall light you. FER. As I hope For quiet days, fair issue, and long life, With such love as 'tis now; the murkiest den, The most opportune place, the strong's suggestion Our worser Genius can, shall never melt Mine honour into lust; to take away The edge of that day's celebration, When I shallthink, or Phæbus' steeds are founder'd, Or night kept chain'd below. PRO. Fairly spoke: Sit then, and talk with her, she is thine own. What, Ariel; my industrious fervant Ariel! 8 Enter ARIEL. Ari. What would my potent master ? here I am. Pro. Thou and thy meaner fellows your last service Did worthily perform; and I must use you There is a passage in NONNUS, which will sufficiently illustrate Κέρκς δ' εκγύς έκανε και τρέμας άκρον έρύσσας Φειδομένη παλάμη, μη παρθένον ύπνG, εάσση. HENLEY. 7 No sweet aspersion>] Afperfion is here used in its primitive fense of sprinkling. At present it is expressive only of calumny and detra&tion. STEEVENS. 3 Fairly spokoi] I airly is here used as a trisyllable. STEEVENS. 9 : 2 In such another trick : go, bring the rabble, Presently? you can fay, Come, and go, Pro. Dearly, my delicate Ariel: Do not ap а proach, Till thou dost hear me call. Well I conceive. ( Exit. I warrant you, fir; The white-cold virgin snow upon my heart a 9 -- the rabble , ) The crew of mcaner spirits, JOHNSON, ? Some vanity of mine art ; ) So, in the unprinted romance of EMARE, quoted by Mr. Warton in his dissertation on the Gefia Romanorum, ( a Prefix to the third Vole of the History of Englilla Poetry. ) The emperour faid on hygh, 6. Sertes, thys is a fayry, « Or ellys a vanite. » Come, and go, Come, and trip it as you go my liver. Abates the ardour of Well. all be filent. (Soft mufick. 7 12 bring a corollary, ) That is, bring more than are fuffici ent, rather than fail for want of numbers. Corollary means surplus. Corolaire, Fr. See Cotgrave's Di&ionary. STEEVENS. No tongue ; ) Those who are present at incantations are obliged to be ftri&ly filent, « elle» as we are afterwards told, « the spell is marred. · JOHNSON. 6 thatch'd with ftover, ) Stover ( in Cambridgeshire and other counties) signifies hay made of coarse, rank grass, such as even cows will not cat while it is green. Stover is likewise used as thatch for cart-lodges, and other buildings that deserve but rude and cheap coverings. The word occurs in the 25th Song of Drayton's Polyolbion : « To draw out sedge and reed, for thatch and stover fit. 19 Again, in his Muses' Elyzium : • Their browse and stover waxing thin and {cant. » STEEVENS, 7 Thy bank with peonied, and lilied brims, The old edition Teads pioned and twilled brims, which gave rise to Mr. Holt's conje&ure, that the poet originally wrote with pioned and tilled brims. » Peonied is the emendation of Hanmer. Spenser and the author of Muleasses the Turk, a tragedy, 1610, use pioning for digging. It is not therefore difficult to find a meaning for the word as it stands in the old copy; and remove a letter from twilled, and it leaves us tilled. I am yet, however, in doubt whether we ought not to read lilied brims; for Pliny, 1 1 1 To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves, Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, 8 B. XXVI. ch. X. mentions the water-lily as a preferver of chasity; and says, elsewhere, that the Peony medetur Faunorum in Quiete Ludibriis, &c. In a poem entitled Tho Herring's Tayle, 4to. 1598, “the mayden piony'' is introduced. In the Arraignement of Paris, 1584, are mentioned " The watry flow'rs and lillies of the banks." And Edward Fenton in his Secrete Wonders of Nature, 4to: B. VI. 1569, asserts, that the waterlily mortisieth altogether the appetite of sensualitie, and defends from unchafte thoughts and dreamies of venery." In the 20:h song of Drayton's Polyolbion, the Naiades are re. presented as making chaplets with all the tribe of aquatic flowers; and Mr. Tollet informs me, that Lyie's Herbal says, “one kind of peonie is called by some, maiden or virgin peonic." In Oviil's Banquet of sense, , by Chapman, 1595, I meet with the following fianza, in which twill-pants are enumerated among flowers : " White and red jasmines, merry, melliphill, "Fair crown imperial, emperor of flowers ; “ Immortal amaranth, white aphrodill, " And cup-like twill-pants strew'd in Bacchus' bowers." If twill be the ancient name of any flower, the old reading, pioned and twilled, may stand. STEEVENS. Mr. Warton, in his notes upon Milton, after filently acquiescing in the subftitution of pionied for pioned, produces from the ARCADES "Ladon's lillied banks,' as an example to countenance a further change of twilled to lillied, which, accordingly, Mr. Rann hath foisied into the text. But before such a licence is allowed, may it not be asked-If the word pionied can any where be found ? or (adinitting such a verbal from peony, like Milion's lillied from lily, 10 exin) —On the banks of what river do peonies grow ?--Or (if the banks of any river should be discovered 10 yield them) whether they and the lilies that, in common with them, berrim those banks, be the produce of spungy April?–Or, whence it can be gathered thai Iris here is at all speaking of the banks of a river ? -- and, whether, as the bank in question 16 the property, not of a water-nymph, but of Ceres, it is not to be considered as an objeđ of her care?-Hither the Goddess of lIusbandry is represented as resorting, because at the approach of spring, it becomes needful to repair the banks (or movuds) of the slai meads, whose grass not only shooting over, but being more fucculens I 4 1 |
